Posted on April 5th, 2009 by admin
The nature of cyberspace is changing fast with the rush now
on to set up rss news feeds. Every gram of news and current
affairs is gleaned from the four corners of the globe so that we
may be informed as to what is happening in hundreds of different
commercial fields of endeavour.
Everything from what new item is selling well on eBay,
to what "Wired Magazine" is saying about the latest technology.
More and more magazine and newspaper publishers are gaining
a foothold on this new juggernaut which is going to change
the way we gather news.
Advertisers too are not left out. Already some of the largest
media companies in the world are now poised to find advertising
space for their clients 'branding' campaigns, on any available
web page that regularly features in rss feeds.
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Filed under: Internet
Posted on February 3rd, 2009 by admin
Packs Hybrid SLI support, but lacks a HDMI port.
Its early days for NVIDIA's new DX10 integrated chipset. But we'd still prefer to see driver support present for every feature. As it is, we can't comment on the effectiveness of Hybrid SLI or the crucially important PureVideo HD 2D video decoder until the software's there.
What we can say, however, is that Palit's implementation loses at least one brownie point compared with the Gigabyte board thanks to the lack of HDMI connectivity. It's an odd decision given that the NVIDIA GeForce 8200 chipset supports HDMI 1.3a. As for the 3D performance of that 8200 mGPU, the less said the better.
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Filed under: Computers and Technology
Posted on February 2nd, 2009 by admin
Asus pushes the limits. What a motherboard. MSI's motherboards short on showbiz moves but supports CrossFire.
Asus Striker II Extreme
Some of NVIDIA's recent motherboard chipsets haven't been that clever. The nForce 780i is a case in point. Despite the 7 Series moniker, it was little more than a rehash of the 680i chipset with PCI Express 2.0 unconvincingly glued on.
The 780i also carried over the 680i's hot-running silicon. The result was pants overclocking, particularly for a high-end chipset. But that's all history with the 790i. Its C73 northbridge packs native PCI-e 2.0, runs much cooler, while overclocking headroom is much improved.
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Filed under: Computers and Technology
Posted on January 31st, 2009 by admin
Gigabyte's new micro ATX motherboard has unbeatable home cinema credentials.
It's a relief to see a new AMD product that's bang on target. We speak, of course, of the 780G chipset. It really is the killer home cinema solution that we've been waiting for.
The best bits are the UVD video decode engine and the comprehensive array of video outputs. The former ensures that CPU load remains at around 50 per cent, when decoding a full 1080p AVC stream. And that's with a 2.5GHz dual-core Athlon 64 chip. Add in HDMI, DVI ports and HDCP and you have the first integrated solution that delivers on the HD home cinema concept.
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Filed under: Computers and Technology
Posted on January 30th, 2009 by admin
Good memory at a good price.
How much RAM do you have in your PC? 512MB? 1GB? Heaven forbid 256MB? In this current market of high priced DDR3 and rock-bottom priced DDR2 you have a decision to make. DDR3 is expensive and it has yet to get out of the shadow of its predecessor.
DDR2 has seriously plummeted in price, here we have a 2GB kit of DDR2 800 that comes in at a Earth-shattering price of $50 and at that price no one has any excuse to be using less than 2GB.
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Filed under: Computers and Technology
Posted on January 23rd, 2009 by admin
The P300 encroached on high end products and low end price.
Make no mistake; the Toshiba Satellite P300-134 is sexier than a nude Scarlett Johansson riding bareback on a tiger. Well actually nothing is that sexy.
That said, having barely escaped coming in dead last in our CPU test we began to worry about the much acclaimed Toshiba and were hoping for some redemption in the form of 3DMark. Sadly, every run we tried ended in a BSOD and some nautical dialogue.
We tried reinstalls, fixes, hacks and voodoo magic but all to no avail. It seems to be something to do with our particular sample and the pathetic Vista Home it comes with, immature drivers FTW.
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Filed under: Computers and Technology
Posted on January 19th, 2009 by admin
The best mouse you have ever used.
At what point does performance and comfort outweigh the cost? When do you have to admit that you have lost your sanity and spent four figures on a mouse? We thought these very thoughts then we rested our sweaty palms on this beauty. The Steelseries Ikari Laser mouse is worth every cent.
There are usually two approaches to designing a gaming mouse. Some mice are low profile like the Razor Copperhead, while others have serious height to them like the Logitech G5. The Ikari Laser is in between these two mindsets. Its design - which Steelseries say took 15 months to develop - seems to be the best of both. It's actually the most comfortable mouse we have in the office and makes gaming a dream. The mouse is designed in such a way that even the largest hands in the office felt comfortable on it; Steelseries felt the need to make sure every finger was comfortable.
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Filed under: Computers and Technology
Posted on January 18th, 2009 by admin
Is it finally the year for Linux to take the throne? No, it really isn't.
It doesn't matter how much money you spend on hardware, you still need an OS to run everything, and this leads to the question: which is best?
While the beardy weirdy brigade might keep banging on about how great open source is and how we should all cuddle a penguin, Linux is simply crap for gaming. Yes, you can play games in Linux, and certain games are now being released for Linux, usually several years after they appeared on Windows, but it's not for the faint hearted.
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Filed under: Computers and Technology
Posted on January 8th, 2009 by admin
They come and go, but Asus's P5K3 Deluxe remains the fastest motherboard we've seen.
The passage of time rapidly turns most PC components from nubile young things into withered old crones. It's just the way of the world. But not this Asus board. It's arguably even more of a goer than it was at launch. It's enough to make you wonder whether there's a portrait of a dusty and desiccated P5K3 hidden in the attic.
The reason for the P5K3's Dorian Gray status, of course, is that Intel's P35 chipset has yet to be eclipsed for pure overclocking. Meanwhile it just gets cheaper. In our tests, it achieved a startling 520MHz bus frequency without northbridge voltage tweaking. It's a great choice for making the most of cheap Intel processors with annoyingly low (and locked) CPU multipliers. Its no-nonsense feature set adds to the built-for-speed allure.
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Filed under: Computers and Technology
Posted on December 22nd, 2008 by admin
Sleeping on the job is not recommended. Especially when you're surrounded by gun-totin mercenaries.
Let's not beat around the bush: Stalker, Shadow of Chernobyl was not perfect. It was rough around the edges and inaccessible - obviously compromised in development. But it had more scope and ambition than any other shooter of the last year: the RPG elements of Deus Ex combined with the free roaming of Far Cry, and topped off with the post-commie setting of Half-Life 2. And it was scary as hell.
Clear Sky aims to fix some of Shadow of Chernobyl 's mistakes. Gone is the fiddly inventory system, replaced by a far more user-friendly interface. The graphics have also been improved: Shadow of Chernobyl's slightly ropey appearance is now turned-up-to-11 DirectX 10 stunning. And it looks very impressive - rain water trickles down vertical surfaces during a shower, smoke realistically drifts out of vents, and it actually gets dark at night.
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Filed under: Computers and Technology
